Posts Tagged ‘reviews’

The Blue Spoon Café in Sauk Prairie, WI., calls itself, “a casual Euro style restaurant offering “food with personality”.  The downtown restaurant offers soup, sandwiches and gelatos along with lattes, teas and a solid wine list.  I know you’re wondering what “Euro style” means and we’re thinking it means something like, “cheeseburgers & chips cost more than 8 bucks”. Still, you get what you pay for as they say…   Read the rest of this entry »

Now is the time when we start seeing all the ads for local farm markets and pumpkin patches. But which ones are worth the drive?  Well, let’s take a look.   Read the rest of this entry »

Our mission to take in central Wisconsin’s small family diners and Cafés led us to Mauston last Saturday to visit the, “Beyond the Daily Grind Cafe”.  The light colors and natural wood furnishings were certainly a nice change from the cloudy and otherwise dreary day it had turned out to be. Read the rest of this entry »

The Main Street Diner & Ice Cream Parlor in Waunakee, WI was a wonderful find and is a classic small town Wisconsin treasure. Now if we could just get the banana karma going in our favor…

As you know here at Skillet Creek one of our many goals is to develop a list of fun central Wisconsin family road trips beginning of course, right from our home here in the Baraboo hills.  Along the way we’ll share the stories, the adventures, the towns, shops and of course those fun little small town restaurants. Today’s story takes us south to Waunakee… the long way.

Not so long ago when you wanted to enjoy a relaxing and scenic country drive from Baraboo or Wisconsin Dells, south to Madison you just jumped on Highway 12.  Back then the little two-lane highway wound its way through the wonderfully picturesque Wisconsin country side at a Sunday driver’s pace.  That’s all changed in the last few years. Today, it’s still a pretty drive, but the new 4 lane freeway seems to rush you through on the way to someplace else. The relaxing pace of yesterday is long gone.

Happily, if you want still want that back country driving experience between Baraboo and Madison you have an option left in Hwy 113.  Hwy 113 leaves Baraboo near Circus World Musuem and takes you over the Baraboo hills, then through Merrimac on Lake Wisconsin, across the Free Ferry (in season), then through Lodi, Dane & Waunakee before finally arriving on the north side of Madison.  Of course in the winter, Lake Wisconsin is frozen and the ferry is well, not moving.  This was fine with us of course, since we were in the driving mood. We went around the big lake by way of Hwy 78 through Portage, then 51, turning on Co. Rd J, then V,  then J again. Go ahead, you figure it out!

Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area.

Sometime later, and after long drive accented with an unplanned and taxing hike up Gibraltar Rock in the snow,  we were just a little famished to say the least.   Our first attempt and finding a nice old fashioned diner went badly.  We strolled into Lucy’s Cafe’ in Lodi.  We overlooked the mildewy aroma and took a seat. We waited, and waited and waited.  Having managed a restaurant or two in my day, I’m patient.  But it’s common practice to welcome a new guest when you see them, bring drinks and menus as soon as you can, and for servers to help out other servers when they are clearly done with their smoke break.  If you can’t get welcoming guests down in a little half-full diner it’s time for a staff meeting. Finally we simply left, still famished and still looking for a nice restaurant.  We continued south down Hwy 113.

Arriving in Waunakee we made a very random choice to turn left to do a quick drive by of the historic downtown.  We do a lot of that.  “Hey, what’s down there?”, I don’t know, let’s go see… blinker on!”.  For a second it didn’t look too promising, like many small towns around Wisconsin these days, Waunakee has it’s share of closed businesses.  We were practically giddy when we discovered the Main Street Diner & Ice Cream Parlor in a converted corner bank. And it was Open!! From the outside it looked promising.

The Main Street Diner is owned by Kevin Reynolds who manages the restaurant while still finding time to run his family farm near Helenville, WI and help out his father with his farming operations in south-central Iowa.  In fact their farms supply fresh produce to the restaurants when in season.  Kevin and his father had leased out the building to other folks until finally taking over the restaurant themselves in 2004.   After months of work and modernization they finally re-opened as the Main Street Diner in 2006. Today the diner has a classic feel with chrome accents and walls  covered with black and white Hollywood prints.  The star attraction however, is the restrooms. We’ll come to that…

Now back to our story. Once inside we were met by a clean and very quiet atmosphere. We were the only ones there for the moment.  Apparently, we learned later, we had just missed a bus tour.  A bus tour which had finished off all the bananas in the place much to the disappointment of our 9 year old who had set his eye on a banana spit graphic in the menu. Still, as our wonderfully offbeat server pointed out, he could be happy that somewhere out there on some rural Wisconsin road was a busload of satisfied… monkeys.

The cafe offers classic diner fare including sandwiches, soup, fries, onion rings and the like.  All done well and quite tasty.  I enjoyed a Ruben Sandwich on slices of that swirly mixed bread that you see all over these days, while my wife had soup and our son dug into macaroni and cheese which had him and the server off on a story about dog food.. but that’s an article all to itself.  Suffice to say, you’ll enjoy the food.  Diner food is what it is. There is no need to dive too deeply here. There are extremes, some diner’s have something wonderful and others are just awful.. The Main Street diner’s food is well, just fine.

The real star of the  Main Street Diner and Ice Cream Parlor in addition to the friendly staff of course, is the bathrooms!  No kidding. A mural in the women’s restroom, by artist Abby Wilson is as amazing as it is unsuspected. 3 women in Victorian dress gaze down from a cloud filled softly lit dome.   The Men’s room takes on a WWII motif with B52 bomber’s gunner suspended over the small room.  The ceiling again has a cloud filled dome, while the walls  show bombs falling on an enemy harbor.  We’ve posted a bunch of pictures here.

We are always just fascinated by the amazingly creative and unique spots you’ll find on the country roadways and small town main streets of Wisconsin.  The Main Street Diner is a classic.  Oh, and by all means, ask for a banana split while you’re there.

We could not locate a website for the Main Street Diner but here is there contact info:

The Main Street Diner & Ice Cream Parlor
100 West Main Street
Waunakee, WI 53597-1128
(608) 849-8388

Today I want to share a little story that I think may be of value to some small business owners, and probably an experience we’ve all shared at one time or another. It’s a story of free advertising, timing and first impressions.  It’s driving all the way to Wally-World to find out it’s closed. It’s when your date arrives and you’re still in your underwear… It’s that sort of story.  It’s hard not to mention the local business by name but we’ll try because they certainly deserve a do over.

Part of what we want to do here at Skillet Creek is offer honest reviews of restaurants and little food shops. The reason behind this is 2 fold. First there’s lots of advertising in the area, but little in the way of reviews. Second, we want to feature those unique little spots where the owners are invested, and usually on premise for more hours than you care to count.  It’s too easy for them to get lost in the din of the national and regional chains that seem to be taking over every community’s main street.

That’s why when we read an article in the local paper about a new cheese & sandwich shop we were intrigued. We’ll call it the “cheese shop.” (It’s like a cop show isn’t it?, “All the names have been changed…”)  The newspaper article we read was basically one of those local interest fillers that spotlights a new businesses in the community.  Nothing wrong with that of course.  In fact had it not been for the article we would not have been driving down to the shop last Sunday. Therein lies the catch.

Based on the article we decided we would drop by and find a nice bit of non-flavorless-cheese and a tasty deli sandwich before heading home to curl up for the Super Bowl.  When we arrived we realized that there was no real parking.  In a way that was stunning.  Here we were in a dead quiet village and the shop had only one real parking spot. You also couldn’t park on the road.  Since there was no way to be sure that the one lone spot was actually for customers, we we parked across the street at another business.

Now the shop itself was in dead-of-winter mode. When we walked in, the shop was dark and the owner had to come out of the back to turn on the case lights.  Even then it was dark enough I couldn’t quite make out the owner’s face through the glare of back-lighting from a small window behind the counter.   As the lights in the case flickered on, I had to hold back a surprised chuckle.. I was suddenly reminded of the Monty Python “Cheese Shop” skit..

Customer: It’s not much of a cheese shop, is it?

Wenslydale: Finest in the district!

Customer: Explain the logic underlying that conclusion, please.

Wenslydale: Well, it’s so clean, sir!

Customer: It’s certainly uncontaminated by cheese….

And it was! The case was empty other than a few lonely wedges of $20 cheese blocks. Like the rest of the shop it was clean, austere, and certainly devoid of food products.  Now the problem here is not exactly with the new “cheese shop”.  They simply can’t afford to have stock this time of year.  I wouldn’t.  In fact, the shop will be closing for a month as it is and re-opening as spring comes a bit closer.  Good plan.  But why the article then? Why now? It seemed we were lucky to have simply found them open for business.

When the local paper wants to do a free write up it’s hard not to jump.  Free advertising, especially for new businesses can be like a gift from heaven.  However, if the timing is wrong it can send customers your way when you are not really ready. And what if those customers are reviewers, bloggers, magazine reports or worse, your potential customers?  What if they are sitting in the parking lot across the street suddenly twittering their experience out to their 1,063 followers? Even that basic newspaper article on the web will float around on the internet forever. (Like this one as well) Hopefully no one in the next month or so will come across that bit of free advertising and decide to have a quaint little country drive to visit a “cheese shop” that simply won’t be open. (I know some will say visitors should call first, but that’s fodder for another article all together.)

We responded exactly the way you want people to respond to advertising.  We went to visit the new local business.  But being the off-season, the shop’s atmosphere was dark and the feature display was not stocked. We walked out with a negative experience.

Now, doing what I do every day I get it. It was just a timing thing.  I can see that come spring the “cheese shop” will be a nice stop for folks traveling through to visit nearby attractions. They  will also provide a great new lunch shop for the locals as well.  We’ll go back and give it another try when the season gets bustling and give you a proper introduction then.

Is it worth passing up the chance at free press now to simply avoid people showing up when you’re not ready for prime time? Do you do it anyway because as they say, “all press is good press”?  Something to ponder….

Now since we didn’t find what we were looking for there, we heading off to Sauk-Prairie just about 15 miles south of Baraboo.  We knew there was a Carr Valley Cheese outlet store there. “Now there,” I thought, ” is a place that must have some cheese!”.  Once parked and with the car lock clicker clicked, we headed in. Happily seeing well lit shelves full of cheese in every shape and color, I asked the young lady in the store, “What’s the sharpest, most flavorful cheese you have in the shop?” She paused..,

But I’ll save that for another day…

It’s funny.  There are often places in our part of the state that I can write about online and the owners would simply never know.   As much as many of us live on the internet almost daily, there are many who don’t find a use of it in their lives. They don’t think of the internet as a way to advertise and simply depend on the locals and drive by traffic to survive.  Once such place is the “On The Way” cafe in Pardeeville, Wisconsin.  Too bad too. I think a lot of visitors to the area would enjoy the stop.

The On The Way cafe is everything you would imagine a small town diner to be, right down to the cigarette smoke wafting through the air from the patrons sitting at the counter.  Yeah, we could do without the smoke too, but we’re not offended by it. The walls are covered with a mish-mash of decorations that either at one time attracted or caught the humor of the owner; a vine of plastic flowers, a sign that says “No Whining”,  autographed dollars tacked above the service window, a framed print of a farm house, a pumpkin sitting on a toilet with a pie underneath captioned, “How pumpkin pies are made”.  Even the tables scored the old fashioned napkin holders and condiment racks. Classic.

Our waitress was a very friendly middle aged woman who managed all of the cafe’s tables and counters on her own.  When we were there, there were maybe another 7 or 8 customers besides ourselves. She always took time to chat and check in to see how we were doing.  Another advantage of small town diners is staff that is not always racing around and often seem genuinely pleased to interact with their patrons.

The menu was filled with standard sandwich and breaded steak options. We chose the bacon cheeseburgers which are the only true test of a small town diner’s prowess.  While we waited our sodas came, in cans… with straws. No glass. My cup of coffee was sadly pretty horrid, but on the other hand I had been drinking a Latte all morning and diner coffee was quite a shocking leap into the abyss.

When the burgers arrived, the smoke, the 80′s hair band music wafting from the kitchen and even the bad coffee suddenly faded away as we were suddenly lifted into burger heaven.  We all agreed, that these were the best bacon cheeseburgers we’d eaten since back in the day when diners like this one were more common.  While I could sense the a sudden jump in cholesterol, it was totally worth it.  It’s hard to describe the flavor of a properly done burger other than to say the cheese was real, and the meat has not been soaking up 10% water which is so common these days. Real food, even diner food is something special.

After our meal we learned another thing about small town diners, bring cash.  Many simply can’t or won’t pay that 3% transaction fee charged by credit card companies.  My son and I sat “hostage” on the bar stools and chatted with our waitress at the counter, while my wife drove down to Pardeeville’s only ATM.   It was about 2 pm when we finally were walking out the door.  Which was a good thing.  The diner was closing for the day.

From the outside, the out “On The Way”  cafe easy to miss.  There are no big signs or open windows to give it away.  You almost have to be looking for it.  The hours are Mon-Thur. & Saturday 5am-2pm, Fridays 5am to 8pm and Sundays 5am-noon. If you are into small town diners, can tolerate cigarette smoke and 80′s hair band rock, the bacon cheeseburger is practically manna from diner heaven.

On The Way Cafe
321 South Main Street
Pardeeville, WI 53954-9452
(608) 429-1507

Google Map

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I’m 44 years old.  I figure I’ll get that out of the way right now, otherwise you’d never understand why I’d have become so attached to Stratego or so disappointed with what Hasbro has done to it.  Imagine all the excitement of taking your child to get a new board game that you knew by heart, only to get a game that was so unplayable that it was left on the counter as a memorial to a wasted ten spot.

For those of you following along at home, Stratego is a board game, introduced to the US in 1961 by Milton Bradley.  In the game you have a set of numbered pieces that move about the board, bombs that lie in wait and a flag.  The object of the game is simple, capture the enemy’s flag.  The rules are simple enough, (Low number takes high number, one type can remove a bomb while all others cannot, etc.,) that children in the 8 years and up range can play.  The simplicity of the rules make it a great addition to “Board Game” night.  Something many families do these days to keep everyone together and away from the television.

I hadn’t thought of Stratego in years,  (Most of the time as a child I had no one to play the game with so I simply used the red and blue pieces as cars and drove them around the board!) but the other day we happened upon a fancy high priced edition at a Barns & Noble in Madison.  I found myself explaining the game to my 8 year old and soon committing to getting a copy.  Ah, only not the expensive, fancy-pants version!

This is when the fun got started.  We decided we’d stop off at the local Wal-Mart on the way hope and see if they had a affordable copy.  I mean, Christmas just ended, how hard could it be?  This gave us a 45 minute drive back to Baraboo to build up expectations of a night of Stratego.  Parents always put in the pepperings of “IFs” as in “IF they have it”, but children of course are deaf to the word, “IF” until well after drinking age.   Needless to say a long chattering walk to the toy department revealed that they didn’t have it!  Oh, NO!

We thought we’d give the local toy store downtown a call.  “They’d have it.” We thought.  They always have the fun, interesting toys that big box stores won’t touch.  But alas, they were closed on Sunday.  We called the Wal-Mart in Wisconsin Dells. Nope.  Then we ran over to the Sears store, that used to be a K-Mart.. (another story, for another day) and walked through their empty hallways only to find…  they didn’t have it.  That was it, for one evening.. No Stratego today!

The following morning was again filled with an 8 year old voice asking about all the intricacies of Stratego.  How would this happen?  What happens when your Spy finds a Bomb?  Are you going to order it from Amazon today? Obviously Stratego was not going away. We’d talk about it again after school… (and work).

About the time we needed to pick our son up from school I did a quick surf over to Amazon and found a multitude of versions.  Still the $99 classic seemed a bit much, and we were not sure we wanted the “Lord of the Rings” magical edition.  In a last effort we ran over to Portage, a town 13 miles to the east of us.  We’ve found that the Portage K-Mart & Wal-mart stores often have things no one else does simply for lack of customers  it seems.  Once again our theory held true. The Portage Wal-Mart had Stragego!  Oh the joy of the heavens upon us! And only $10 to boot!  Soon we were driving home again deep into the mire of the 8 year old thought process; Are we going to play as soon as we get home? Is Dad going to play? How many flags are there? What happens when …” and on and on.

The new Hasbro Stratego is called the “Fire and Ice” edition and like most modern things is cheaply made, forcing parents to spend a half hour putting stickers on the plastic pieces instead of simply embossing them as they once did.  The number of pieces has been cut by 10, and the board shrunk.  The once easy rules have now been so complicated and muddled by the use of fantasy characters with new “special powers” that, by the time we had all the stickers on, we no longer had the patience for the rules.  The thought that I could save the evening by forgoing the dragons and Yetis, for the numbers was a big fail as well.  Even those had been re-arranged as not to function by the standard rules that had worked fine for almost 40 years.  In the end we left it to sit, unplayed.  A $10 donation to the needy Hasbro & Wal-Mart’s  executives.

The game we ended up buying on Ebay.

Now to be fair, change is often a good thing.  Being a techie, I love “new”.  I’ve even read a few reviews of the “fire & Ice” Stratego that call it a “Breath of Life” into an old game.  Maybe.  But if a game can no longer be easily explained or played right out of the box it’s on a road to mediocrity.  Forcing people to put stickers on 60 plastic pieces before they can even play the game is not going to do anything to keep the attention of today’s kids.  Board games are suffering already without the help of poor design and  confused instructions. For the moment there is still a small number of people and families who treasure these wonderful excuses to have a bit of fun, and think through a little friendly competition. Game makers need to recognize their audience.  If they are patient enough to play a board game, they are probably paying  close attention to product as well. It seems to me the cheaply made parts, and a “Velvet Elvis” fantasy theme  are only going to hasten this game’s demise.

In the end we went on Ebay and ordered a vintage 1961 version.  I mean, if we’re going to go through the trouble of ordering the classic, why not go all the way!?

More . . .

• Ed’s Stratego Site
• Fire & Ice Edition on Amazon
• Family Game Night by Amazing Moms
• Just for fun, Pat Benatar sings “Fire & Ice”